Leading indexes on Asia's stock exchanges pointed downwards at lunchtime in Friday's trading, with the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong down as much as 2.1 percent.
In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 index was at minus 0.3 and Topix at minus 0.6 percent.
In China, the composite index in Shanghai and Shenzhen was around zero and up 0.5 percent, respectively.
